Meditation queries
I have been meditating from last July. I had been going through varying experiences during my practice but for the past 2 months or so I have noticed that my throat/neck region stiffens up during meditation, which graduates to my shoulders and arms - my breath shortens/quickens and when I finally think that ‘this might be the end of me’, my breathing resumes back to normal. My body heat rises tremendously when I go through this, specially around my chest and around my skull. And this repeats throughout my sitting.
Now that I have started Bhutasuddhi meditation and Matrka visualization, I notice another phenomenon occurring. While meditating, my lower back rises up, sometimes to a point where my chest expands and elongates vertically as if a force wants to pull my entire body up in the air and my breath becomes shorter and rapid until eventually I run out of breath. The stiffening of the neck/throat or the rising of my lower back, both occur but without a specific pattern.
I know that I should leave experiences aside and focus on my meditation but since they have been occurring so frequently I cant help but wonder what is it that Im going through. Would love to hear opinions of fellow practitioners regarding this. Many thanks.
I'll share my thoughts and you can do what you like with them :)
I've had an experience where I felt like I was likely to suffocate unless I consciously made myself breathe. But I didn't do that and instead went much deeper, and afterwards I realized that my body had kind of taken care of itself automatically. This experience taught me in a very small way that I didn't need to fear relinquishing control.
On the other hand, the idea of "you're not supposed to control your breath no matter what" still sounds to me like obeying what you're "supposed" to do. Preventing yourself from controlling things is itself a kind of control. Maybe that technique has valuable things to teach you, but also, maybe there are multiple ways to learn those things.
And my third thought is that you probably wouldn't have posted to ask about this if it wasn't concerning to you, which imho means it's something to be skeptical about. (Or maybe you posted looking for someone to say "oh yeah, that's your chakras getting activated; congratulations on reaching level 8 of the game!" I'm being a little sarcastic here, please don't take it personally)
Whatever it is though, it sounds pretty interesting. I'm curious how it works out for you.